Retirement
by saye0036
Summary: Sometimes we find what we've been missing when we aren't looking for it.


Olivia moved around the kitchen making two sandwiches and mixing martinis. She placed them on a tray and moved to the glass sliding door.

She made her way across the patio to the beach, towards the umbrella and two lounge chairs looking out over the beautiful Bahamian beach.

"Here...let me do that. You shouldn't be doing anything strenuous yet darling. Now that I finally got you to myself, after so long. I don't want you to hurt yourself falling down because of your hip."

"My hip is fine. I don't like feeling useless." Olivia Mansfield, former M of MI6 said looking into the now lined but still rugged face of James Bond.

They both took their seats and James placed the tray between them. "What do you see when you look out over the beach? The joy of retirement or do you feel tied here?"

The former M chuckled. "I see a beautiful beach and sunshine that I never expected to feel on my face again."

"Ha...Scotland is cold and dachaigh is depressingly grey at that time of year."

"Drachaigh? Does that mean what I think it means? Do you miss home...living here retired on this beautiful island?"

"I do sometimes, but then again, disappearing from view was the entire point." James winked at her.

"I know...I did the same. I never expected you to find me or that you would…"

"Remember how much you entranced me."

Olivia blushed. "I never thought you noticed me in that way, what will all the women you seduced."

"I flirted with you practically daily...how could you not guess why I flirted. You flirted back just as much."

"Mine was in jest, because I was hardly as glamorous as your conquests in the field 007."

"Have I ever told you how much I love when you call me that...it reminds me of...well...a different life really. So yes...now that I say drachaigh...home...I realize I do miss it terribly. You dying there brought it all back. I don't care that the house is gone...the land will most surely remain."

James reached over and pulled her hand to his lips. "I love you. M."

"I never thought I would love again...I'm sorry if I've been negligent and brooding lately, but I do love you James. I thought it was a crush... for years of banter and flirting...but these last few months have been magical."

"I understand. It's hard for me to finally admit, that I could ever truly love someone but then I saw you at that beach bar and I couldn't believe my eyes. Your white hair shining...you more beautiful than ever. You died at Skyfall in that bloody old dark kirk." James said with a frown.

They ate and stared out to the sea in silence. James brooding as he tended to as if he could have prevented her pain and almost death at Skyfall.

"Your mind goes to him often doesn't it. I suppose I'm part of the reason."

"James...I...I can't say that I don't...think of him.'

"What was he like?"

"Broodish, suave and arrogant, just like someone else I know." M smiled as she looked at the man beside her."

"He knew about me?"

"No...or at least he never asked me about you. Unfortunately he believed you had died because he never saw you again. We all thought you dead. I mean, I had heard rumours but I really never expected you still to be alive. Honestly, I never thought to look deeper once I became M but in my defence I was married and very busy."

"Excuses, excuses. Is he as handsome as me?"

M smiled. "What...jealous? Yes, he is extremely handsome. Painfully so."

"You loved him!?"

"What!?"

"You heard me. Don't tell me you fell for your agent? As M! That is very...very...wrong my dear."

"Hey! What about you're...what could only be considered sexual harassment, of M's secretary?"

"You didn't seem to mind at the time Miss Moneypenny. Does the young James hit on the secretaries? Or did he hit on you...as M." He raised his brows in question. "You're killer sexy so I've no doubt the pup thought about it!"

"James!" M said in protest in the way the conversation was evolving.

"You in a power suit would be bloody irresistible. I always knew you would climb the ladder and go far. You were too bloody smart Moneypenny. I like M better...it does suit you and it's killer sexy."

"I don't think the new Miss Moneypenny gives him anything but grief."

"A relative?"

"My grandniece but she doesn't know that. I buried the family connection, much like the one between you and James Bond."

"That's just like you, Moneypenny...sorry what was your eventually married name? Mansfield is still an M after all."

"Listen 007 the world has changed a great deal while you've hidden yourself away here."

"I was injured on that last mission and I was bloody well over 50 at that. I lost my wife Tracy on our wedding day...all because of the job and I think I deserved the quiet life. I was sorry not to have been around enough for the boy but he was far better off with my sister."

"You did. You did your duty love...just as I did. We all have regrets about our pasts, no matter what kind of life we lived and you and I have lived exceptional lives."

"Very true darling. So tell me more about my annoying namesake?"

"Your nephew is just like you were and a good man."

James Bond looked intently at the woman beside him.

"What is his number?"

"Why do you have to know?" M said coyly.

She finished eating and tried to just let that question marinate between them. He sat with his eyes trained directly on hers, waiting.

"007." M eventually said with a smirk.

"You gave him my old number! You did fancy him!"

M smirked and took a sip of her drink. She looked out at the setting sun over the ocean. "You will always be James Bond, and the first 007 to me."

"And you will always be the first and my only Miss Moneypenny, M."

They entwined hands and watched the sunset over the ocean, as they had many nights since she walked into that beach bar.

M pondered the life that got her to this moment and smiled. Retirement was not going to be all that lonely after all.

The end.


End file.
